I do believe I promised something a bit more action-packed this week, although now that I think about it Mount And Blade has plenty of action. But I meant monsters jumping out of shadows and guns firing a staccato of panicked percussion. There are almost a million games that could scratch that particular itch, the one on your trigger fingers, but with the age of Rage almost upon us, I’ve decided to take a look at some mods for Doom. Or should that be Dooms? To the past, gentlemen and ladies, to the past.

The obvious place to start a trip through Dooms is with a remake of the shareware episode of the first game in the series remade in the engine of the last game in the series. Classic Doom 3 is just such a thing, demonstrating that it is still possible to capture at least a portion of that old-fashioned Doom feeling. As well as filling your ears with music that, to gamers of a certain age, actually sounds like the maps it accompanies, Classic Doom 3 recreates those maps incredibly well. It’s a bit too moody and dark for my liking but that’s Doom for you, I suppose. It’s easy to forget how garish the first two games could be, with glowing power armour, and shiny blue orbs littering the corridors.

As well as recreating the details of the levels, Classic Doom 3 elevates the Doom Marine back to his position of demon destroyer extraordinaire. Doom 3 reduced the number of enemies but increased their power relative to the player. This may have been for technical reasons, as a design choice or to create a more frightening atmosphere (I suspect all three played their part), but on the whole it’s fair to say it wasn’t a popular decision. Classic Doom 3 is not only a reminder of how good the level design in Doom 1 was, but also a study in which parts of the old design work in the new engine and which parts don’t. I’d argue that it’s a more enjoyable experience in deathmatch rather than as a singleplayer mod. It’s a great experiment, but it makes me want to play Doom rather than a modernised remake of Doom. So let’s do that.

For the purposes of these mods, let’s assume I’m talking about Doom 2 because that’s where most of the support is. So dust off your copy and get ready for a some very good things indeed and some very strange things indeed. If you’re running through ZDoom, this thread should help you with Wad usage. If you’re playing without, try this. If you still aren’t having any luck, there are incredibly helpful communities here and here, and the answer should already be available.

Here’s something you may not know about your PC, the one attached to the monitor that you’re presumably reading these words on right now. If that happens to be your work PC in the offices of Grumpy McGrumpy, the grumpiest boss in Grumptonville, don’t actually try this because what I’m talking about is computer-generated Doom levels. Let me run that by you again. Your computer can create levels for Doom. It’ll just churn them out. Most of them will obviously be rubbish but Slige, the program that makes this magickery possible, does have some restrictions and parameters so the hit-to-miss ratio isn’t as small as you’d think. That’s not really the point though. I think there’s just something terribly exciting about knowing that there are an infinite number of maps just waiting to be played. But don’t Mr McGrumpy know about it. He’d just grouch up his face like a festering knuckle and tell you to get back to the spreadsheets analysing falling lint production in Stoke.

So, there you go. I’ve given you infinite Doom maps. My work here is done, I can hang up my hat and go and enjoy the rare warmth of this uncanny English autumn. But I won’t because infinity is not enough. Before we move on from Slige though, it’s well worth checking out The Proving Grounds, a Doom 2 Wad made entirely using the random generator. It’s the best of its kind, which is to say it’s the best collection of maps made by an unthinking, unfeeling machine for a seventeen year old game that you may not own. Don’t say I never give you anything.

Cyberdemons were the first game enemy that actually caused me sleepless nights. I’d like to defy your expectations by saying that’s because I was staying up until the early hours killing them, but it wasn’t that at all. I was scared. It seems ridiculous now. I’ve braved Silent Hill 2 and Amnesia, I even played through necrophiliac point and click abomination Midnight Nowhere, an experience I’d like to share with you all one day over a very very strong drink – but I still remember with a certain spine-tingling dread the first time I saw a Cyberdemon and then heard the bastard thing stomping around, hunting me. It seemed unkillable, which is why it’d be a particular treat if I was to share a Wad that consisted entirely of puzzle-type levels all about killing Cyberdemons in imaginative ways. Imaginative doesn’t mean chainsaws and BFGs though, it means telefragging and friendly fire. The Wad is Cyberdreams and it’s quite the thing.

Each level is a self-contained challenge, tasking you with using the mechanics of the game to kill a Cyberdemon, or if you’re particularly lucky, a group of Cyberdemons. The level design is often brilliant and it shows how flexible iD’s creation was. Seeing demons turn on each other after being struck by a stray projectile was probably the first time I became aware of the possibility of that sort of emergent gameplay. It felt like I’d discovered that it could happen all by myself, as if it was an accident in the code that only I knew how to exploit. Great times. Using those tricks, among others, Cyberdreams makes Doom 2 into something else entirely.

The Sky May Be Wad has divided the Doom modding community since its release. Is it a work of abstract genius or is it the worst thing to happen in the world ever? It’s an entertaining mishmash of nonsense and surrealism, which as far as I can tell doesn’t make it either a work of genius or a thing worthy only of burning in a fire. I actually like it, though I suspect if it were more well known today, or had been created for a modern game in this modern era, it may well have generated a whole host of annoying memes. As it is, we are thankfully spared that, although here is the plot. Someone make some memes out of that.

The Great God Imp has shown mercy on your soul and cast you into the hellish pits of his virtual toybox. Running around the garish lego buildings, you become aware that the virtual toychest is actually running under windows 3.11. However the mouse is broken and the ALT and F4 keys have been removed. You must find a way to shut down the system and end this nightmare! Oh, and watch out for the Great God Imp. He may not be so kind next time He sees you.

More oddness with Void, a Lovecraft meets Escher journey through some distinctly strange environments. My personal favourite of the far-too-many Wads I’ve played over the last fifteen years or so, Void adds all sorts to the base game and has an actual story. It doesn’t go in for the comedic surreality of Sky May Be, instead delivering a cohesive yet fractured experience. It’s the kind of thing I’d love to see attempted in Doom 3, which we’ll be going back to after this last step on our journey into the distant past.

If you only play one of these mods, make it Void. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll be tempted into the sheer madness and bountiful plenty of computer-generated content and will be giving Slige a go as well. As always, do discuss other mods and Wads, great and small, in the comments below. I’ve intentionally missed out some of the big hitters, most of which can be found here, and many of which are still as good as anything created by a community of game fans.

Look at that, it’s Doom 3, not a massively ambitious Doom 1 total modification from 1997. However, it’s not just Doom 3, it’s the Conscientious Objector mod, made by some of the people behind Dear Esther. Don’t go thinking you’re going to get Dear Esther on a space station though, instead expect Doom 3 with rubber bullets. How does a man fight back hordes of the slathering undead when he’s incapable of putting them down for good? With great difficulty and shoulders buckled by despair, that’s how.

Doom 3 is an unlikely game to use as a platform to investigate not-killing, being a game mostly about definitely-killing, but that’s why Conscientious Objector works. Finding yourself backed into a corner, unable to defend yourself is a horrible experience, made more so when you realise you’re basically in that situation because of budget cuts. Real guns and equipment cost too much money. You’re going to have to make do with what your superiors found in the bargain bin.

To round us off, here’s another vision of what Doom 3 could have been. Rather presumptuously calling itself Perfected Doom 3, this mod doesn’t try to make Doom 3 into Doom 1, it doesn’t try to query the nature of death and it certainly doesn’t take place inside Windows 3.11. It’s just Doom 3 as many people wanted it, with weapon balancing, monster overhauls and numerous other tweaks to completely alter the pace of the game. I wouldn’t call it perfect but if you haven’t visited vanilla Doom 3 for a while and have even the slightest desire to do so, I think this is a superior way to fight through iD’s maps.

For the record, I enjoyed Doom 3 but it’s hard for me to work out how much of that was because of the way that I played it. Doom was one of the games that made me and it was always something of a collaborative experience, a journey I undertook in the company of friends and my sister, who is also a friend. Doom 3 is one of the last games me and my sister played through together when we still lived in the same city, meeting up and using our time-honoured method of alternating control after a level or a life. In a strange way, that made it the last game of my youth and it’ll always have a place in my heart, flawed as it may be. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy bringing it a little bit closer to perfection though.

I fully approve of this post! Doom 3 is middling at best, though worth owning for The Dark Mod.

Doom & Doom 2, however, still have so much to offer. Fans still seem to be pumping out tremendous numbers of levels, and coupled with the modern additions ZDoom brings to the Dooming table, can still offer exciting, old-school shooting. You won’t find non-linearity in FPSs any more, but many Doom maps offer it in spades. It still has a solidarity to its shooting, variety of challenges, and exciting pace that hasn’t been matched by any other FPS (except, perhaps, Blood).

As Adam has kindly linked for us, every year, Doomworld post their “Cacowards” for the most interesting / top quality fan-made maps. Worth perusing if one wants a clutch of map-packs to gun through.

I have similar fond memories of trying to teach my little sister to play Quake with me. She’d rock the WASD & the space bar and i would rock the mouse, as she couldn’t (and still can’t) figure out a free look control system.

Speaking of Doom 3, the best way to play it is Sikkmod + Monoxead’s Texture Pack + Wulfen’s Texture Pack.
The latter still is being worked on, but it makes the game look IN-SANE. Hardly any AAA release matches that kind of visual quality.

The only weapon that has ironsights in Brutal Doom is the Assault Rifle that replaces the pistol. The ironsights don’t change the accuracy in any way, it’s used more as a zoom feature and it’s extremely useful, what with added headshots and making it easier to hit far away enemies and all.

It isn’t full auto and doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it’s accurate and a great backup weapon. Unlike the pistol.

Yeah, the Brutal Doom weapon balance is excellent, and a huge improvement over regular Doom.

Fists: Silent. Altfire is a heavy punch. Can be used to safely knock out zombies if you sneak up on them.

Chainsaw: Near-100% stun on anything short of a Baron Of Hell. Also causes you to regenerate up to about 30% health through attacking, so you can out-heal damage if near death, sometimes.

Berserk: Huge range of new powers. Lets you pick up/throw barrels/lost souls, and stunned enemies can be used as meat-shields. Berserk has two altfire modes – SMASH (huge punches) and RIP AND TEAR (Mortal Kombat-esque finishing moves that heal you a bit, but hold you in place for a while). Has a small chance of dropping from regular enemies, as it’s a normally quite rare powerup.

Pistol: Replaced with Rifle. Fires as fast as you can click. Does same damage as pistol, but higher fire-rate. Reloads every 30 shots. Altfire zooms in for accurate sniping.

Shotgun: Does exactly half the damage of half a super-shotgun shot (rather than 1/3), plus is accurate enough for mid-range headshots. Requires reloading – holds 16 shells, each cycle of the reload animation loads in two.

Super Shotgun: Same as it ever was. Altfire fires one barrel at a time. Has special ‘partial gib’ animations if you punch an enemy point-blank with it.

Chaingun: Replaced with minigun. Almost as powerful as the plasma gun, although less accurate than it used to be, and chews through ammo faster. Has a spin-down period after firing, though. Altfire locks your feet and spins the barrels constantly, allowing you to fire in repeated, short, accurate bursts but you can’t move while revving it.

Rocket launcher: Feels a little more powerful, although reloads every six shots or so.

Plasma gun: Primary fire is the same as ever, but the shots have a little splash damage – great against swarms of smaller enemies, but makes it dangerous at point-blank. Altfire charges up a shotgun-like blast of plasma bolts – great for popping out round corners to deal shock damage against a big enemy.

BFG: Same as ever, for the most part. The big green central shots have a little splash damage on them, though.

Secret weapons: Gibbing a mancubus (pretty hard) drops its arm as a gun. You only get a few shots, but once ignited, smaller enemies can ignite other smaller enemies. Killing Nazis in the secret levels gives you an SMG, which behaves like the assault rifle, but full-auto rather than firing once per click.

It’s all good stuff. Enemies in general are more mobile and aggressive. Imps have a leaping melee attack, and cyberdemons can now aim where you’re moving to, rather than where you are. This is balanced out by almost all enemies being vulnerable to headshots.

Doom balance:
Chaingun = Exactly the same as the pistol but fires faster. Can also snipe.
Double-barrel shotgun = Does the damage of 3 shells for the cost of 2.
Plasma gun = Does the same job as the chaingun, but more powerful.

Doom was great, but it had some serious weapon redundancy issues. Good to see it addressed at last.

The pistol’s obsolescence is the only one I can get behind. Unless a map throws ammo at you, the shotgun is still useful against weaker enemies and at range, and you can’t spend energy cells like you do bullets. Plus, the chaingun is still better for sniping, since it’s hitscan, while the plasma rifle can drop strong enemies quickly in close quarters (when time is important). Feelings of redundancy come from bad level designers, not the weapon selection.

I recentply played through Doom 3 again, using that mod. I found that it made the game almost ridiculously easy, as the enemies now had hit-zones, so you could do headshots, and some enemies were turned way overpowered so fights became unfun. For instance, the Revenant’s rockets instakill you if they hit. That already isn’t much fun, but you can one-hit kill it with the shotgun if you just run up and shoot its head. Same with almost every other enemy, one hit to the face kills it.
Also, the “survival horror” aspect of Doom 3 is cancelled out by Perfected Doom 3, because you get so much ammo all the time, that you can just blast away constantly. There’s not more enemies, so you just have more ammo, but enemies die in less hits than before.
Except the hellknights, and such, but they take such an enormously long time to kill that.. just no. Vanilla Doom 3 is weird to play right after, but I’d say it’s a superior game without that mod. Just get some fancy texture and graphics mods instead.

It seems obscene to mention Doom mods without mentioning Brutal Doom; link to skulltag.com . You’ll require either the latest version of GZDoom (link to svn.drdteam.org) or Skulltag and it changes much of the gameplay while leaving it still recognisably Doom. Except with extra clouds of blood, fatalities, more blood, more aggressive enemies, blood and dismemberment. It’s the only way to play regular Doom anymore, something I still do on a regular basis.

Then there’s AEOD – Super Smash Brothers for the PC. link to forum.zdoom.org It throws together weapons, foes and power ups from shooters old and new and somehow stays bizarrely balanced and coherent. Even better, it’s compatible with any custom set of levels. link to youtube.com

I also did a good chunk of gameplay footage of Brutal Doom, which is my absolute favourite Doom gameplay rework mod, along with the ZPack level set, which really shows off what the GZDoom engine can do.

I love Doom so much :s have been playing it on and off for the last 18 years. Last LAN party we held had us playing Skulltag. Great times :D

Will have to look at a few of the WADs listed here I haven’t gotten round to trying yet.

Skulltag opens up some weird things btw. Their serverbrowser gives you the option to download the mod the server is running so you don’t have to think about where to get or how to install. Just works. I was suddenly playing what appeared to be Command & Conquer in Doom, getting money, having to harvest tiberium, and being able to buy into various different classes… weird stuff. I saw people flying around in vehicles, but I never figured out how to get one :(

Oh, and just to get this out of the way now, preemptively, before an argument breaks out:

No, nobody uses the Doomsday engine. It stopped development about five years ago, and maybe two mods ever directly supported it. ZDoom (or, more widely, GZDoom, the openGL variant) is the new standard Doom engine, and the vast majority of mods require it. Skulltag is an older version of GZDoom with a much more advanced networking layer, server browser and other online-centric stuff.

If you want to play Doom (or any Doom-engine game – they support everything up to Strife) these days, get GZDoom for solo, Skulltag for online.

Doomsday_1.9.7_build234 released less than three months ago would like to have a word with you. I understand the need to advertise your favorite engine but there’s no need to lie about doomsday.

It’s fallen behind in terms of features but it was one of the first to offer advanced 3D graphical options, and it should have been included in this article because it looks real nice with the original wads.

It’s just going to be a big list of everyone’s favorite wads, isn’t it?

If you’ve ever wanted to know what ‘monster placement’ is, like, if you want the definitive guide of what that is, maybe you’ve heard of it, and you’re unsure, and you’re thinking, I’d like to know about that. Or maybe you’ve seen some good monster placement, but nothing that makes you reminisce over your favorite shotgun. Maybe you’re just itching for some monster placement, you’re thinking, I haven’t had any of that in a while!

Well then, clearly, you want the map with the best monster placement.

That, my friends, would be Nullspace, by Russel Pearson. It even has a baby brother!

Another few really good GZDoom mods that really put fresh spins on things:

NAZIS:link to doomworld.com
It does what it says on the tin. It basically turns Doom into a modernized Wolfenstein 3D. Ideally best played with the Epic 2 campaign – link to doomworld.com – Which has a ‘strange stuff in Egyptian ruins’ theme that well matches the Nazi-infestation theme.

WWHC-Diaz:link to forum.zdoom.org
A ‘sci-fi’ realism mod, adding magazine-loaded weapons and stuff like offhand grenades and a System Shock-esque psi-amp, along with a mixture of new enemies, a large number of them being robotic. Compatible with any standard Doom level pack.

Psychic:link to forum.zdoom.org
Inspired by Devil May Cry, this gives Doom a more arcade-like/modern spin. Enemies drop coins, which must be collected before they fade out. You can spend the coins on upgrades to your weapons, or new/upgraded spells, which can be fired off-hand and used in conjunction with your traditional firearms. Guns have unlimited ammo, while your spells have a regenerating mana bar. The only gripe I have with this mod is that in the later stages of any campaign, it gets a bit easy as you’ll become crazy-powerful eventually.

Real Guns Hardcore:link to sites.google.com
Known to most as ‘Modern Warfare Doom’. It’s a surprisingly accurate port (complete with full visual rips) of the core Modern Warfare gameplay, off-hand knifing, perks and more. Enemies are also replaced with a bunch of new variants to keep you on your toes. Your guns are generally a lot more powerful than in regular Doom, but your regenerating health can only soak up 2-3 hits before death, so gameplay is a lot twitchier.

Wow. That real guns mod (trailer) certainly very clearly illustrates how ridiculous iron sights are – see an enemy in the distance – obscure your screen with gin image and muzzle flash and shoot in their general direction – stop shooting to see if they are dead yet, or still there.

Aliens Doom TC was the scariest game I have ever played. I stood in front of the door to a dark corridor on the third map for around three minutes because I was too scared to enter. That’s good level design.

looking forward to the perfected doom 3 mod.
the last bit of your article struck a cord as
my sis lives in another country nowadays and the last game i played with her was Goldeneye N64, which makes it doubly important to me because of that.

Actually, if you like Slige, you should give Oblige a shot. The most recent versions are in a state of chaos–for now, I recommend using Obhack, which is based on an older version that still has working traps and teleporter ambushes:link to samiam.org

By far my favourite Doom mod of forever has to be Aeons of Death. It should work with pretty much any standard set of maps, and any of the base games (though only with the zDoom source port). It turns the game into a megacompilation of every FPS of the 90’s, by replacing every enemy in the game with a randomized set of enemies taken from any old shooter you can think of, and some you can’t. The arsenal follows suit as well, even having rasterized versions of weapons from 3d games like Jedi Knight and Unreal Tournament show up. All the randomization and variety of weapons and items gives the game an almost Diablo-ish feel, where you are constantly swapping out weapons to try out new ones.

For those watching at home, Dominic is talking nonsense. That very same year the winner of the multiplayer award of the 17th cacowards was Mega Man 8-bit deathmatch, which is about as far off from pure as you can get. Other distinguished recipients of awards that you could call “impurse” include: Action Doom 1 + 2, Ghouls Vs. Humans, Stronghold, Harmony, BGPA Missions: Operation Overlord and Liberation, Chex Quest 3, Cold as Hell, and the list goes on…

It’s been a while since I played w/ any of the sourceports, but for my money, the Doomsday engine was the easiest to get up and running and looking very nice without having to faff about w/ settings and such, by default keeping most things vanilla but prettier, and adding mouselook if desired. (Of course there are tons of replacement graphic packs and 3d model support and all that, but IMO they change it too much.)

Heh, just noticed this, and as a doom player, I definitely approve, but I do want to add some things (for the classic side of things, I don’t play Doom 3 often)

First of all, while ZDaemon does have appeal, if you’re interested in the multiplayer scene I do recommend you also check out Skulltag and Odamex, and both have active communities, and they all have their own appeal.

Secondly, no mention of random level generators and SLIGE is complete without a link to Oblige! (link to oblige.sourceforge.net), which is a fairly powerful random level generator.

Thirdly, while ZDoom is cool and all, I invite people to check out other engines out there, like Eternity Engine, Doomsday Engine, and hell, even the PrBoom’s aren’t bad with the amount of levels designed around the boom standards. If you’re an oldschooler, Chocolate Doom is right up your alley

And that’s all I can think of at the moment. But other than this, the post is quite interesting, especially since it reviews a bunch of the classic favorites that everyone likes. While things like Brutal Doom and AEoD do have their appeal, I personally don’t like them, as they aren’t how I want to play the game and a bit overdone in ways I don’t entirely like. But hey, give whatever yo want a run, it never hurts. Rarely. Terry wads might be the singular exception to that rule. If you’re not familiar with Terry wads, I don’t invite you to go check them out.